Posted April 26, 2009
There's not too much talk about the missions/gameplay experience here, and I am sure I will run into many questions, so maybe we can start a place for people to come read about the missions and ask questions here.
I'm a complete noob, so I'll start out with a tip and then a question of my own.
TIP: In the very first mission, I was having trouble until I asked someone on another unrelated forum, where this game coincidentally got mentioned, what to do as Empire at the start of the game to keep from dying so much or spending so much time and money healing.
A helpful dude answered, and I'll add small things I picked up on my own: Fill your front row with squires and upgrade them to knights as soon as possible. When you start the battle, if your healer can heal at least as much damage as the enemy's frontline soldiers can deal out, put all your squires/knights on defensive. On defensive, damage from enemies will be cut in half. This appears to include long-distance attacks from archers.) While your front is on defensive, use attackers from your back row -- archers or mages -- to take out long-distance fighters in their back row, who generally die much more quickly than frontline troops. You need their back row's mages/archers dead ASAP or they will take out your healer, which will make this strategy fall apart. When their back row damage dealers are down you then need their healer down so you can start to pull ahead in the healing/damage race.
When their back row is done, it's time to take care of their front line. If they have three and you have three, one of their front guys will probably be taking on someone on your outer edge of the front row, while the other two will be concentrating on a single one of your guys. Usually this will be the guy in the middle unless the guy on the opposite end is lower level than the guy in the middle. While killing the back row, you may have had to use some or all of your heals on your healer or mage to keep the back row killing going. Now that you're concentrating on the front, it's time to rescue the guys up front. The most likely candidate is the guy who has been getting hit on by two guys at once. The exception comes when he is getting hit on by two weak guys and the other guy in your front row who has been getting beat on by a single enemy is facing a very strong enemy or one with area damage effects of some kind. Then you need to heal that guy up really quickly or he will die, and you may also need to get him off defensive so you can use him as part of a double team to take out the scariest monster fastest.
Every time you take a guy off defensive, he is going to die faster, but he will be able to finally contribute some killing damage too. Double team or triple team with your front row on one guy as often as you can, because it's more important to take out at least one damage source ASAP than to slowly make them all closer to death while leaving them around to keep on hitting.
My standard play, when my healer gets strong enough and my back row mage gets strong enough, is to stay defensive until everyone but one unit is completely healed. Enemies will always go for whoever's hitpoints and level are lowest, so concentrate their efforts on one guy and just heal him. Eventually either your back row will kill all enemies but one, or it will be clear that you have the initiative to come out of defensive with all but your wounded guy to kill off everybody but one attacker you leave alone. When you are down to one enemy, take as many turns as needed to heal up your lone wounded guy before slaughtering the last enemy. Remember that no matter which of your attackers hits last, you always get the chance for one last heal, so sometimes instead of waiting for the enemy's hit and then healing, you can just whack the guy one last time and heal on the way out.
Researching the celerity spell ASAP is important, even critical. If your enemies have the initiative, they may be able to harm or kill one or more of your front row before you have the chance to go on defensive. If you are using a mage hero, it will also sometimes give him the initiative to cast a spell that takes out enemies that paralyze, poison, or whittle away at the health of all your units at once. This is critical, because when your mage is strong enough, he can sometimes cast first and knock off half or more of a weak caster hero's hitpoints on the first cast, which can make that caster go into flee mode and never cast a spell at all! This is a huge bonus for you and can turn a fight all by itself.
It's also a reason to research the level 2 spell that lets you summon a Living Armor quickly. If you cannot kill a single fleeing member of an enemy group, it can keep running away during the same turn you fought in, and you may have already used up your movement points. A tough enemy hero that has leveled up his units before getting to you will be preserved if you can't get at him. This can easily happen if you are fighting a flying demon and you are just a mage hero; the mage will never catch up and you will lose the chance to eliminate that threat. He could be resurrected, healed, and out causing mischief again before you even get to a town to heal and resurrect at all. So cast the living armor on fleeing mobs if you don't want them to get away.
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Okay, there are some tips that will help get you through the first two Empire missions in style. Now I have a question.
How do you build up enough to survive the 3rd? The spiders come out and generally fight in groups of two. Each spider is strong enough to kill in one or two hits, yet has enough hitpoints that it's almost impossible to kill even one of the two before all my guys die. Fleeing doesn't really work when one or two hits will kill your whole group if it's trying to flee. And anyway you can't flee your way to victory.
My first few tries:
1. I tried to kill everything in my little area to level up a single hero(mage). A fair amount of healing was required and gold was low. By the time I was coming to the last of my local enemies, spiders were out in force, and I was no match for them. Winning one rare battle still left me in range for the other spiders, as they traveled in groups. There was no way to escape even when I won.
2. I tried to kill just the prime monsters in my area which led to good loot, and took the nearby town on my island. Then I went after the demons across the river, and got my experience/leveling going on that way. This helped eliminate an enemy and get me a scroll or two, but nothing significant. The freedom to run around did get me a lot of extra gold mines and life mana deposits from my archangel.
I got some experience but again it was not enough to fight the spiders. But at least I was denying the experience to the spiders, some of whom I had seen from my other strategy were close to leveling, which would have taken them from almost invincible to surely invincible. At the end of this strategy spiders are running rampant through the land and kill everything I own but my home town. I then get Uther, who is useless except to chop through a soldier guarding the way to the city you have to go to. Parking him there for many turns, nothing happens. Nobody comes to fight and there is nothing else to do on that mission. Taking him out to fight, he gets slaughtered.
What now? The only other strategy that comes to mind is to wander into the forests from close to the very beginning of the level to take on the spiders before they even come out, and I've even seen this casually suggested as one option in a walk-through, but if my leveled group can't take on the spiders, what chance does my newbie superweak one have?
I'm a complete noob, so I'll start out with a tip and then a question of my own.
TIP: In the very first mission, I was having trouble until I asked someone on another unrelated forum, where this game coincidentally got mentioned, what to do as Empire at the start of the game to keep from dying so much or spending so much time and money healing.
A helpful dude answered, and I'll add small things I picked up on my own: Fill your front row with squires and upgrade them to knights as soon as possible. When you start the battle, if your healer can heal at least as much damage as the enemy's frontline soldiers can deal out, put all your squires/knights on defensive. On defensive, damage from enemies will be cut in half. This appears to include long-distance attacks from archers.) While your front is on defensive, use attackers from your back row -- archers or mages -- to take out long-distance fighters in their back row, who generally die much more quickly than frontline troops. You need their back row's mages/archers dead ASAP or they will take out your healer, which will make this strategy fall apart. When their back row damage dealers are down you then need their healer down so you can start to pull ahead in the healing/damage race.
When their back row is done, it's time to take care of their front line. If they have three and you have three, one of their front guys will probably be taking on someone on your outer edge of the front row, while the other two will be concentrating on a single one of your guys. Usually this will be the guy in the middle unless the guy on the opposite end is lower level than the guy in the middle. While killing the back row, you may have had to use some or all of your heals on your healer or mage to keep the back row killing going. Now that you're concentrating on the front, it's time to rescue the guys up front. The most likely candidate is the guy who has been getting hit on by two guys at once. The exception comes when he is getting hit on by two weak guys and the other guy in your front row who has been getting beat on by a single enemy is facing a very strong enemy or one with area damage effects of some kind. Then you need to heal that guy up really quickly or he will die, and you may also need to get him off defensive so you can use him as part of a double team to take out the scariest monster fastest.
Every time you take a guy off defensive, he is going to die faster, but he will be able to finally contribute some killing damage too. Double team or triple team with your front row on one guy as often as you can, because it's more important to take out at least one damage source ASAP than to slowly make them all closer to death while leaving them around to keep on hitting.
My standard play, when my healer gets strong enough and my back row mage gets strong enough, is to stay defensive until everyone but one unit is completely healed. Enemies will always go for whoever's hitpoints and level are lowest, so concentrate their efforts on one guy and just heal him. Eventually either your back row will kill all enemies but one, or it will be clear that you have the initiative to come out of defensive with all but your wounded guy to kill off everybody but one attacker you leave alone. When you are down to one enemy, take as many turns as needed to heal up your lone wounded guy before slaughtering the last enemy. Remember that no matter which of your attackers hits last, you always get the chance for one last heal, so sometimes instead of waiting for the enemy's hit and then healing, you can just whack the guy one last time and heal on the way out.
Researching the celerity spell ASAP is important, even critical. If your enemies have the initiative, they may be able to harm or kill one or more of your front row before you have the chance to go on defensive. If you are using a mage hero, it will also sometimes give him the initiative to cast a spell that takes out enemies that paralyze, poison, or whittle away at the health of all your units at once. This is critical, because when your mage is strong enough, he can sometimes cast first and knock off half or more of a weak caster hero's hitpoints on the first cast, which can make that caster go into flee mode and never cast a spell at all! This is a huge bonus for you and can turn a fight all by itself.
It's also a reason to research the level 2 spell that lets you summon a Living Armor quickly. If you cannot kill a single fleeing member of an enemy group, it can keep running away during the same turn you fought in, and you may have already used up your movement points. A tough enemy hero that has leveled up his units before getting to you will be preserved if you can't get at him. This can easily happen if you are fighting a flying demon and you are just a mage hero; the mage will never catch up and you will lose the chance to eliminate that threat. He could be resurrected, healed, and out causing mischief again before you even get to a town to heal and resurrect at all. So cast the living armor on fleeing mobs if you don't want them to get away.
-------------------------------------------------------------
Okay, there are some tips that will help get you through the first two Empire missions in style. Now I have a question.
How do you build up enough to survive the 3rd? The spiders come out and generally fight in groups of two. Each spider is strong enough to kill in one or two hits, yet has enough hitpoints that it's almost impossible to kill even one of the two before all my guys die. Fleeing doesn't really work when one or two hits will kill your whole group if it's trying to flee. And anyway you can't flee your way to victory.
My first few tries:
1. I tried to kill everything in my little area to level up a single hero(mage). A fair amount of healing was required and gold was low. By the time I was coming to the last of my local enemies, spiders were out in force, and I was no match for them. Winning one rare battle still left me in range for the other spiders, as they traveled in groups. There was no way to escape even when I won.
2. I tried to kill just the prime monsters in my area which led to good loot, and took the nearby town on my island. Then I went after the demons across the river, and got my experience/leveling going on that way. This helped eliminate an enemy and get me a scroll or two, but nothing significant. The freedom to run around did get me a lot of extra gold mines and life mana deposits from my archangel.
I got some experience but again it was not enough to fight the spiders. But at least I was denying the experience to the spiders, some of whom I had seen from my other strategy were close to leveling, which would have taken them from almost invincible to surely invincible. At the end of this strategy spiders are running rampant through the land and kill everything I own but my home town. I then get Uther, who is useless except to chop through a soldier guarding the way to the city you have to go to. Parking him there for many turns, nothing happens. Nobody comes to fight and there is nothing else to do on that mission. Taking him out to fight, he gets slaughtered.
What now? The only other strategy that comes to mind is to wander into the forests from close to the very beginning of the level to take on the spiders before they even come out, and I've even seen this casually suggested as one option in a walk-through, but if my leveled group can't take on the spiders, what chance does my newbie superweak one have?
